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No yeah for he's a jolly longfellow He heard it

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all right Biography and long film in england Poetry's teo

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teo polaroids right announcement's hiawatha atrophied transmitter Our analysis is

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right Fireside poetry Transcendentalist all right here we go Welcome

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I'm here to introduce you to a posse of legendary

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american writers known as the fireside poets and their unofficial

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leader henry longfellow Guy with santa claus beard Yeah Although

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longfellow was poet and a mighty fine one it might

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be more helpful to think of him as a rock

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star He was as close as you could get in

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those days Anyway so cuddle up grab a fire poker

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now and snatch a bag of marshmallows because this fireside

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is about to start cooking All right Our longfellow friend

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was born in portland maine than massachusetts in eighteen o

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seven hears his mother the daughter of a revolutionary war

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hero in his pops a prominent lawyer and later a

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member of congress As you can imagine young henry didn't

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want for much He went to boden college and then

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spent three years studying modern language in europe Or so

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he says could've been three years of nonstop ragers who

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knew whatever happened in europe longfellow then returned to boden

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to teach Well in eighteen thirty one he married mary

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storer potter who helped him published his first book putra

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mayor it's a french for over the sea which documents

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his travels in europe minus the keg stands assumedly tragedy

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struck hard in eighteen thirty five when mary died while

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having a miscarriage longfellow was devastated in eighteen thirty six

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He started teaching modern language at harvard and then released

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his first collection of poems and eighteen thirty nine entitled

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voices of the night He was thirty two at this

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point by the way which should make all of us

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who aren't fourteen years prodigies feel a lot better His

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second collection ballads and other poems came soon after In

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eighteen forty one With both of these books longfellow became

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a popular poet basically the jay z of his day

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Soon after the publications of ballads longfellow married his new

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boo frances appleton Well they had six children together and

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generally lovely marriage Longfellow then released evangeline along forum poem

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in eighteen forty seven and quit teaching to focus on

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writing full time in eighteen fifty for well that same

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year he published the song of hiawatha A poem will

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be looking at soon Some big things were brewing in

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the world however like you have a civil war with

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this massive conflict On the horizon longfellow wrote paul revere's

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ride in an attempt to unite the nation in patriotic

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passion And then in eighteen sixty one longfellow's wife died

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in one of the strangest ways ever She was melting

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wax on a letter to seal it and her dress

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caught on fire Really not making this up about longfellow

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was devastated he wrote little in the following years he

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would die a month after his seventy fifth birthday which

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due to his massive popularity had been practically a national

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holiday way doubt even jay z will be able to

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say that well the first of longfellow's poems that we're

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going to look at is the song of hiawatha don't

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think this poem is a few stanzas and we're out

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of here kind of deal now is a twenty two

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part epic it's the odyssey with native american flair well

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the poem begins with g ici mon ito master of

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life announcing the birth of a new prophet hiawatha iowa

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fa's mom is a normal lady and his dad is

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a demi god no biggie articular hero does a bunch

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of cool stuff like killing a giant fish god named

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misha nama making the corn grow better and even inventing

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reading and writing because why not All right well things

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get dark in the second half of the poem when

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two of hiawatha as friends die and his wife gets

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ill during a particularly nasty winner and she dies a

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cz well one night hiawatha has visions of white men

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arriving in a giant boat and teaching his people a

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new religion No no we're talking about christianity Sure enough

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this vision comes true And hiawatha trust that his people

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will be safe and the irony levels go off the

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charts At the end of the poem hiawatha hopped in

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a canoe and paddles away and that's it I'm sure

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we'll get the rest of the story in the sequel

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One of the first things you'll notice about hiawatha is

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it's form and meter which basically referred to the rhythm

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of the poem Traditional european literature uses something called i

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am as the basic unit of structure Well our good

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buddy shakespeare for example uses something called iambic pentameter that

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is it uses i am sze which is the iambic

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part and includes five of them per line which is

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the penta part Pentameter in contrast longfellow uses a meter

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known as tro cake tram matter This meter uses tro

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keys instead of i am sze they're basically the opposite

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A stressed syllable followed by an unstrapped won the word

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tetra tells us that there are four tro keys per

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line Well check out this line doesn't have a different

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field and shakespearean death dead He lay there in the

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forest Well longfellow use this unique meter throughout his career

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but chose it here in particular because it matched his

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stereotypical image of native american chance Longfellow got a lot

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of flak for this creative decision which can be said

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about many aspects of the poem Critics of his time

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saw his portrayal of the native americans to be who

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sympathetic which is hilarious because modern critics see that same

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portrayal as too stereotypical and patronizing Well either way we

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can see hiawatha as longfellow's attempt emphasis on tend to

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set right the relationship between white americans and indigenous populations

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Teo help everyone you know just be friends What one

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smart thing longfellow did in this regard is making the

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narrator of the poem a native american musician named now

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wada which both separates himself an old white guy from

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the poem subject matter and frames it as a sort

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of aural tradition that longfellow just happened to set down

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on paper making the poem feel all the more authentic

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All right moving on Paul revere's ride was published a

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few years after hiawatha and was written in part as

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a response to the buildup for the american civil war

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Paul revere was a revolutionary war hero famous for warning

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new england that the british army was advancing on them

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and that's exactly what the poem is about Paul revere's

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ride begins with a titular character chatting with a friend

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about the british plan of attack which he needs to

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know before he can notify the people of the danger

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So they set up a system If paul's friend puts

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one lantern in the nearby church tower than the british

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were coming by land but to if they're coming by

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boat So falls pal does some snooping and learns that

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the british are in fact coming by boat and puts

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up two lamps accordingly Meanwhile paul is raring to go

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he's like vin diesel before race in fast and furious

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so off he goes hitting a new town every hour

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and warning people in each place by midnight he's in

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medford by one he's made it toe lexington and buy

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two He arrives in concord Well from there the poem

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gives us a basic overview of the battles that went

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down the following day and closes by telling us that

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paul revere's warning will echo through history whenever the country

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is in trouble We can't possibly imagine what he's referring

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tio well like hiawatha paul revere's ride uses a fairly

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standard meter though it's a bit less strict Take a

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look at the rhyme scheme for the first stanza for

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example those letters marked the rhyme scheme of each line

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by the way And as you can see it's a

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sing song poem you know here revere five lines but

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there's plenty of variation to is we see in the

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following lines longfellow mostly uses two kinds of meter here

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that i am which we mentioned before that's on an

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unstrapped syllable followed by a stressed syllable toe dumb and

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the anna past which is to unstrap syllables followed by

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a stressed one Dad adam all right lookit line two

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it's made up Of one and a pest followed by

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three i am line three on the other hand has

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four straight and a pest giving it a galloping feeling

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you know kind of like a force Well the rest

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of home is like that too varied but regular meter

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consisting mostly of volumes and anna pests as faras the

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content goes it's pretty clear that paul revere's ride was

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written about the build up to the civil war A

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national conflict would certainly tone is one of those hours

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of darkness and peril and need right well that's one

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big similarity weekend draw between paul revere and hiawatha Both

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take retellings of american history and in the latter case

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american mythology and used them to comment on contemporary issues

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of longfellow's day Well as you can see longfellow wasn't

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writing super arty pretentious poetry he was writing for the

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masses Think of it is the difference between some super

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underground musician you can only hear on soundcloud and a

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top forty rapper who's selling out stadiums Longfellow is actually

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part of a whole movement of mega popular american poets

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known as the fireside poets and that's why we did

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this video that way well these guys were basically a

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supergroup You've got william cullen bryant john greenleaf whittier james

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russell lowell oliver wendell holmes senior and of course henry

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longfellow Well these guys were known as the fireside poets

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on because they were pyromaniacs or anything but because they

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wrote poems for everyone phones everyone could enjoy poems for

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hanging out with family and friends in front of the

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fireplace Help some common elements of the fireside poets included

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the use of narrative conventional form rhyme structure and meter

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themes of americana commentary on contemporary issues and a general

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tone of sentimentality in you know mushiness all of which

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are present in hye wa thin paul revere In fact

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longfellow might have been the most popular his admittedly popular

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bunch so consider him to beyonce to their destiny's child

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One big influence on the fireside poets in general and

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longfellow in particular is transcendentalism who sounds trippy So what

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is that A bizarre new age religion form of interdimensional

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time travel some hip new genre that only the coolest

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cool know about No transcendentalism was a literary political and

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spiritual movement that got its start in massachusetts in the

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eighteen thirties when a bunch of people basically took a

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look at nature and went meet these folks were writers

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religious readers social reformers all with common belief that we

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need to reconnect our lives with god and nature So

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yeah basically hippies Well the first step according to them

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is to develop a sense of individuality to free ourselves

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from society's rules far out man another big part of

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it is living with nature transcendental folks saw that is

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the best way to experience god Key figures of this

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movement include walt whitman margaret fuller henry david thoreau and

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ralph waldo emerson Although henry longfellow isn't exactly considered a

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transcendentalist writer he seems to have been heavily influenced by

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that movement in his personal life We can definitely see

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its influence in hiawatha for example in its adoration of

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nature revere ing native american society and transcendentalism still influences

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american society Without it we wouldn't have hippies hipsters and

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pretty much anywhere that begins with hip Basically i'm trying

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to say that transcendentalism is a deeply indistinctly american philosophy

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one that shapes american culture to this day All right

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So what do we learn Well for one we were

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introduced to henry Longfellow who wasn't just follow it but

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a legitimate pop culture icon in his day his poems

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like song of hiawatha and paul revere's ride show us

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why this is true Longfellow focused on pleasing the masses

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rather than pleasing insular bitter angry dark critics Weaken see

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it's mentality mirrored by longfellow's rat pack of poetic compatriots

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fireside poets basically the supergroup of their day Finally we

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have to look at transcendentalism to fully understand longfellow which

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doesn't hurt because transcendentalism remains hugely influential on american society

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To this day Which brings us to a close hope

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you've enjoyed yourselves and remember all you eligible bachelors and

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bachelorettes out there There's A reason they call him longfellow 00:11:57.275 --> [endTime] Ah

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